Charles Grippo

The movie Revolutionary Road is getting a lot of attention because it reunites Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio eleven years after Titanic. But in my opinion there's a much better reason to see this movie: actress Zoe Kazan who has an important supporting role as DiCaprio's lover. Along with the rest of the theater world, I first became aware of Ms. Kazan two years ago when, fresh out of the Yale School of Drama, she appeared with Cynthia Nixon in Scott Ellis's revival of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie off Broadway. As Sandy, the student who "assassinates" Brodie, Ms. Kazan acted rings around Nixon who played the title role and who spent most of the play struggling to maintain her Scottish brogue. In fact, Kazan was almost as good as Pamela Franklin in the fondly remembered movie. I saw the revival twice just because Kazan was so mesmorizing. Critics and directors also took notice. This past fall she garnered more justifiably fabulous reviews in the (still running) Broadway revival of The Seagull. The New York Times even did a lengthy profile of her recently. Mostly everybody expects it's only a matter of time before she becomes a name above the title. By the way, if her name sounds familiar, it should - she is theatrical royalty. Her grandfather was the legendary director Elia Kazan. Her dad Nicholas Kazan and her mom Robin Swicord are A-list screenwriters. By the way, besides having acting talent, she appears to have inherited her parents' writing abilities: reportedly she has written a play that will get its world premiere by the Actors Theater of Louisville later this year.